Cold-rolled Stainless Steel vs Hot-rolled Stainless Steel

Stainless steel is omnipresent in our lives! However, when people who are not familiar with stainless steel hear that it is divided into cold-rolled stainless steel and hot-rolled stainless steel, they may have questions like “Why are there cold-rolled and hot-rolled stainless steel?” What is the difference between the two? Today, I will tell you the difference between cold-rolled stainless steel and hot-rolled stainless steel.

The stainless steel cold-rolled plate is simply a steel plate with a thickness of less than 6mm and a 2B finish, which is shiny. Thickness between 3mm to 16mm of steel plate is stainless steel hot-rolled plate, with industrial surface and matt surface.

Hot-rolled Stainless Steel

The hot-rolled Stainless Steel is a material made from the slab (primarily continuous casting slab) that is heated and then rolled into strip steel using rough rolling and finishing rolling mills. The hot steel strip exiting the final finishing rolling mill is cooled to a set temperature through laminar cooling and coiled into a steel strip coil by a coiler. After cooling, the steel strip coil is processed into steel plates, leveling coils, and longitudinally cut steel strip products through different finishing lines (leveling, straightening, cross-cutting or longitudinal cutting, inspection, weighing, packaging, and marking) based on the specific needs of the user.

Advantages:

1. Destroys the casting structure of the steel ingot, making the steel structure dense, the grains refined, and eliminating microstructure defects.
2. Hot-rolled stainless steel has better toughness and ductility and is less expensive.
3. The torsional resistance of hot-rolled stainless steel is superior to cold-rolled stainless steel.

Disadvantages:

1. The residual stress caused by uneven cooling makes hot-rolled stainless steel poor in deformation, stability, fatigue resistance, and other properties.
2. The mechanical properties of hot-rolled stainless steel are far inferior to cold-rolled stainless steel.

Cold-rolled Stainless Steel

The cold-rolled stainless steel is produced by processing and rolling hot-rolled stainless steel coils. Generally speaking, the processing process is hot rolling → pickling → cold rolling. Although the steel plate is heated during the rolling process, it is still called cold rolling. Due to the continuous cold deformation of hot-rolled steel, the mechanical properties of cold-rolled steel are relatively poor and the hardness is too high. It must be annealed to restore its mechanical properties, and the one without annealing is called a hard-rolled coil. Hard-rolled coils are generally used for products that do not require bending or stretching.

Advantages:

1. Fast forming speed and high yield, without damaging the coating.
2. High plastic deformation ability and high yield point.
3. The surface of cold-rolled stainless steel processing is without an oxide layer, with good quality and high dimensional accuracy.

Disadvantages:

1. The wall thickness of cold-rolled stainless steel is small, and the ability to bear local concentrated load is weak.
2. There is still residual stress within the section after forming, which makes the flexural performance of cold-rolled stainless steel worse.
3. The toughness is low, and it is easy to twist when being bent, and it is easy to flexurally twist when being pressed. The torsional resistance is poor, and the price is relatively high.

Why Choose Sino Stainless Steel?

Now that we have covered the common questions about the differences between cold-rolled and hot-rolled stainless steel, we hope that you have a better understanding of the subject. If you are looking for suppliers and manufacturers of Cold-rolled Stainless Steel & Hot-rolled Stainless Steel, we woud advise you to visit Sino Stainless Steel.

As a leading supplier of cold-rolled stainless steel and hot-rolled stainless steel across the world, Sino Stainless Steel provides customers with high-quality Stainless Steel Angles, Stainless Steel Channels, 201 Stainless Steel Strips & 304 Stainless Steel Strips, 409 Stainless Steel, 316 and 316L Stainless Steel, Stainless Steel Hexagon Bars, Hot-rolled Stainless Steel Coils, Colored Stainless Steel Sheets, Stainless Steel Perforated Sheets, Cold-rolled Precision Stainless Steel Strips, Stainless Steel Wire, and Embossed Stainless Steel Plates at a very competitive price.